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One of our client’s major requirements was for a living space where the presence of the family would always be felt. In response, we devised a single-roomed layout without columns that took advantage of the distinctive features of the existing warehouse. A large kitchen was installed to cater to the needs of the food-loving husband-and-wife couple. We then conceived the entire living space by taking the kitchen as a focal point, with a mix of various other activities and functions unfolding around it. Within this single-roomed space, we also created a box-like structure with a loft bedroom for the children on top of it, and private quarters including a bedroom and bathroom inside it. In order to minimize heat loss within this massive space, a 100mm layer of urethane foam was added to the walls, floors and ceiling, while a combined heat and power device was installed in the living room to heat water and provide floor heating. All openings were designed by making use of existing sash windows and doors, while glass panes were all given a double-glazing treatment to improve insulation.

Located close to Naka’s sacred Todaiji temple, Japanese architect Yoshiaki Yamashita has designed a private residence for a retiring husband and wife. The house is primarily a two-storey dwelling, with spacious open-plan living accommodation positioned at the upper level of the home. above, a roof terrace offers panoramic vistas across Naka. The dwelling’s sleeping quarters are contained on the ground floor, while an exposed concrete basement provides a secluded area for the client to work on his oil paintings. in order to maintain a degree of privacy, a large window-less façade is presented to the passing street, while glazed volumes at the rear of the property allow for unobstructed views.

Being in Andalucia, in the south of Spain, the idea was to create a huge garden with big covered outside spaces, giving some shade when needed, where you could live outside day and night, all year long. It’s all about catching that twilight with your friends and family, chilling out with some tapas and great Spanish wines. At the same time we needed to create the necessary privacy towards the neighbouring buildings, so you could live outside without being exposed. The concept therefore is that the whole site is a garden surrounded with a peripheral wall filled with content, that’s the living room, a private garden. Above that living room landscape we set a patio house – a house over a garden.
In the winter time, one covered part of the private garden can be closed with sliding windows and heated.

There are no windows or openings to the outside / public space, the house appears as a white and cubic sculpture, similar to the Moorish patio houses in Andalucia. Only the plants give a sign of the interior life to the outside. Everything is covered in white plaster, creating this endless playful landscape just covered by the deep blue Andalucia sky, it’s there to host people.

The family, who occupy a typical 1940s bungalow, asked Andrew Burges to reorganise and extend the property in Sydney’s North Shore to improve both the daylight inside and the connection with the garden. “The conceptual framework of the house has been developed around improving the quality and character of natural light in both the existing interior and as a defining element in the new addition,” said the architects. The pitched roof of the single-storey extension rises from behind the roof of the original house, resulting in a V-shaped gap between the two. This incorporates skylights, ensuring that daylight reaches spaces at the centre of the home. The living, dining and kitchen area located within the extension is illuminated by large windows facing the garden and by two skylights built into the roof that channel light onto the walls.

Materials were chosen to enhance the unusual section of the new structure. The sloping ceiling is painted white, while the walls that extend up towards the skylights are constructed from bricks reclaimed from the demolished rear wall and former bathroom. “The section creates a play between an abstract, white, sculptured ceiling line and bulkhead datum, which washes light on the more robust natural finishes used below the ceiling and bulkhead datum,” explained the architects. Natural materials, including American oak used for the fitted cabinetry, and a concrete floor create tactile surfaces below the ceiling line. A central core containing a bathroom and laundry was inserted between the old and new parts of the house.

Positioned on a sloped, wooded site in a rural area of Luxembourg, a private house stands as a glass prism featuring distinct spatial zones. The L-shaped residence offers both privacy and seclusion, as well as panoramic views of the surrounding landscape. Opaque cladding envelops the dwelling on the south and east sides, protecting the property from the passing street and neighbouring buildings, and anchoring the structure to the plot. An interstitial space containing a series of terraces bridges internal and external space, subsequently creating a dialogue between the primary elevation and the glazed structure. The principal circulation route connects the stair hall and divides the house into two parts: a solid zone marked by a rhythm of structural piers, and a voided zone to the north, accentuated by a lighter steel structural system. Housing technical amenities and parking facilities, the lower level of the property opens to a sloped yard with a sauna, fitness area, and direct access to the garden above. The primary public spaces are located at the ground level, with an open kitchen, guest suite, and children’s playrooms located along the south side, and the living and dining volumes to the north. The bedrooms and master suite are placed along the south side of the upper floor, shielded from excessive sunlight by a system of glass louvers. Opposite these rooms a study, library, and lounge overlook the double-height living room below.

The project includes a main house, guest retreat, pool house, and tennis pavilion that sit on 10 acres of rolling hills. While the location makes way for a typical ranch-style house, this project features a combination of modern and vintage furnishings, clean lines, and a truly stellar contemporary art collection. Considering its surroundings, the house was built with massive blocks of Texas Lueders limestone that they mixed with steel and glass walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the green landscape and fill the house with something natural – sunlight.

Besides the “great room”, the main house has an eat-in kitchen, six bedrooms, and a master suite. The main living area has double-height ceilings making the open living and dining room feel quite grand. Each bedroom has a completely different vibe making it really hard to choose a favourite. The master suite is located right off the great room and has perforated suede wall panels giving the room a lush feel. In the guesthouse, there’s two bedrooms, an indoor/outdoor living room, and a wine cellar.

The new addition is a gentle intervention that emerges quietly from the canopy of a beautiful, mature lemon-scented gum tree. “With sensitivity to the site’s inherent strengths, the design embraces the preservation and integration of the established tree allowing it to remain the dominate feature on the property.” says B.E Architecture. Covered outdoor spaces are literally built around the gum tree, encapsulating and framing the trunk. Timber-clad columns recede into the background and a fine line of glazing opens to the densely planted side yard for continuous access to the natural environment from within the interior spaces.

An upper level sits in the branches of the tree floating above the bottom structure to provide a unique treetop setting overlooking views to the Sydney Harbour. “The roof is treated in a considered stone so that it is more like landscaping adorned with the scattering of fallen leaves.” Preservation of the tree required the structure be physically light. Built on a steeply sloping site, the expansive addition made from thin concrete includes an underground parking garage and a large suspended pool, without damaging the tree’s root system. The suspended platform also provides a generous planted area creating obscured views of the house.

Two volumes of light – one warm and one cool – one projected to the expansive horizon and one toward the canopy of the desert sky. The 2200sf Dialogue House is a gestalt instrument for touching the full range and specificity of this light, this “place” – day and night, season to season and year to year. At the base of Echo Mountain the main living volume is elevated above work, guest, and the car, furthest from the street on a lateral pinwheel brace of charcoal masonry walls that extend cardinally capturing the site.

The exterior surfaces of the pinwheel walls as well as the main volume absorb and reflect light akin to the “desert varnish” that coats the volcanic geology of the Phoenix Mountains turning silver, red, purple-brown-black during the day only to collapse into silhouettes at night. Thus, “life after work” is simultaneously supported by the apparent thickness and thinness of light. The interior of the street volume is plastered cool white, half terrace – half cool water as a retreat from the city within the city where one can only can see sky. Wind and water activated light is refracted onto the interior surfaces by day and most dramatically at night which provides an animated foreground to the skyline and distant horizon beyond.

Living spaces feature wide panoramas toward ocean below, while concrete and vegetated walls remind of the rocky and forested setting. On its exterior, the structure visually blends with the wooded context by through its moss-covered roof. Additionally, the topography has been manipulated to control groundwater flow through the site, while being momentarily captured in the courtyard’s pond. The residence’s composition takes influence from the dynamic and irregular qualities of the rocky site. A scattered arrangement of concrete walls act as the main organizational elements, while at times clad in black fiber-cement panels. The resulting spaces provide a range of separate moments of connection to features surrounding the house, including a small tidal basin off the kitchen nook, a ledge of moss covered rock in the bedrooms, and a view back from the court to a swath of deciduous trees. The climax of openness to the site is experienced from the living room, which features floor to ceiling glass curtain walls toward the pacific.

Due to its proximity to the rugged and sloping creekside bank to the west, the house was subject to strict environmental and geotechnical conditions, including a required setback from the top of the bank that pushed the building’s foundation eastwards. The resultant footprint was awkwardly narrow, so to gain back valuable space, a portion of the main and upper floor is cantilevered back out past the foundation, allowing the native creekside vegetation to grow up, under and around as an uninterrupted, wild, forest floor. This reclamation of space is clearly pronounced in the dining room, where it projects fifteen feet out past the concrete foundation wall. By eliminating window frames and extending the glazing panels on all three sides of the room, past the floor and ceiling planes, the space dissolves into the adjacent forest canopy and provides framed views though to the ocean beyond. Tucked into the hill, the front of the house is deceptively modest in scale, set off by the large mature cedar that anchors the front yard. The topography of the site reveals itself as one descends the exterior stairs adjacent to the forest and follows the exposed concrete wall to the main entry. Continuing through to the interior, the wall rises up seventeen feet to help frame the bright circulation volume, with stairs leading to the upper floor and down to the main living spaces.

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